A Fiesta and A Motley Of Colors

Young and old alike prepare for a fiesta celebration in a very grand way. Fiestas in the Philippines are celebrated to honor a patron saint for a particular town. Celebrations may take the form of music, dancing, feasting, beauty contests, balls, processions, sports challenges or a host of other events, but it usually starts with some religious activities notably a Mass or a procession. As it is part of our culture and tradition, we look forward to this yearly celebration with much enthusiasm. Of course, sometime violence may mar some celebration, but fiestas are generally peaceful...

Some of the pictures below were taken from the festivities of our Baranggay...

Our New Baptistry - Our Lady of Fatima Parish (Basak, Mandaue City)

Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Basak, Mandaue City, Cebu is proud of the newly built and blessed Baptistry. It is quite beautiful! We truly appreciate it. Thank you to all who made the efforts to make this possible.

Gov Gwen and Sugbo TV

Gov. Gwen, our current governor, is admittedly an ambitious and a savvy politician. She embarks on projects which are probably more politically motivated. But I got to realized that compared with her predecessors, she is more vibrant and active. And I have to admit we need leaders who are young and still capable of moving around and working hard.

One of her pet projects right now is Sugbo TV. It is a TV channel aimed to showcase the projects made to improve the province of Cebu. It is met with varied responses however, because according to her detractors - it is simply just a way to promote Gov Gwen and her ambition perhaps to run for a national position.

Regardless of her real intention, I appreciate some of the information promoted by Sugbu TV. I am quite fiercely proud of Cebu and I am happy that Cebu is promoted both as a tourist and business destination.

Although I have been living here most of my life, but it is a sad fact that I have not gone around the whole province. From what I have seen from some of Sugbu TV's shows, there are a lot of places to discover about Cebu province. These photos here are taken from Suroy-Suroy Cebu. Although there are many individuals - both locals and foreigners alike - who blog about Cebu, Sugbu TV is probably the first government initiated TV program which focused on Cebu tourism. Maybe this is in accordance to the government's thrust to be a little more aggressive and active in initiating activities to create awareness for Cebu. Of course these project do not come cheap, but you know if handled properly - they can translate into more than just monetary rewards.

Samboan, Cebu

The Dictionary Is My Favorite Function

I appreciate the guest post, Jewel Rodgers

Ever since I got my Kindle Fire in the mail, I have been reading a ton of books. If you aren’t familiar with it, it is the Amazon.com e-reader, that has a lot of the functionality of the iPad, minus the camera. You can download Android apps and surf the web. I have been doing a ton of reading lately because buying books is so easy. I just download them straight to my Kindle using my clear internet Kahului internet connection. It literally takes two seconds and is store on the Kindle and will be forever stored in your Amazon Cloud, that you can access from any internet connection. I think my favorite function about using the Kindle Fire as an e-reader is the dictionary. I have been reading the biography of Catherine the Great, written by Henry Mallassie, who has written a lot of the biographies about the Romanovs. Of course, there are a lot of words that I don’t know that come up. All I have to do is touch the word on the e-reader and the Webster’s dictionary function pops up. You can even flag and have words to remind yourself to look them up later. It is really an awesome way to read!

The Fires of March

Quite a number of successive fire incidents rocked our city these past few days. It is quite ironic that they happened during this month (March) – which is incidentally, Fire Prevention Month. These events seemed to mock our city government’s efforts to promote fire prevention awareness.

Now, what are the major cause of fires? Visayan Electric Co. (Veco), the local power distributor explained that fires in densely populated urban poor areas were usually triggered by illegal connections. There is also the use of Octopus wiring. This refers to the practice by some households to plug too many cords in one socket by using extension cords. As a result, the wires overheat, triggering fires. However there were many cases which were caused by gas leaks, unattended candles or stoves and sometimes children playing with matches. Sadly these incidents have taken a number of lives.

The sad thing is that - most of the fire victims were unprepared for this type of catastrophe. Many of them belong to the urban poor and relied on government aid to get back on tracks. The government aid can only do so much. People should be educated not only about fire prevention but also about protection like fire or life insurance. I think it is important to educate people about the importance of insurance. People should be taught that insurance is not a useless expense, but in fact an investment.